Seth's Blog : The Having/Doing job gap

The Having/Doing job gap

It’s a dance between workers, bosses and the market.

The most stable quadrant happens when a thoughtful and consistent boss hires the right person, pays them fairly, creates positive working conditions and useful training. In return, the company gets extraordinary performance. That’s someone doing a good job who also has a good job.

A particularly unstable quadrant is the worker who gets all of the above, but because of culture, choice or lack of enrollment, simply doesn’t do a good job. That mismatch could last for a while, but it’s shaky.

Consider for a moment the boss who takes advantage of people (and the system) by creating lousy conditions and paying too little but still manages to enforce output that they consider acceptable. Once workers realize that they don’t have a good job, they leave, if the culture and the economy permit it. Government is critical in helping people doing a good job get unstuck once they realize they don’t have a good job.

And the last quadrant is all too common: you don’t have a good job and you don’t do a good job. It’s not clear which came first, but they often go together.

Everyone deserves to have a good job. And smart bosses show up to help make that possible.